onclusions respecting the antiquity of the earth.
But it may be doubted whether it was so in fact; at all events,
theologians had slowly learned to harmonise their doctrines with the
conception of immeasurable space, when they were suddenly required to
admit the conception of immeasurable time, and staggered under the blow.
The pioneers of English geology were careful to avoid shocking religious
opinion, and Buckland devotes a chapter of his famous _Treatise on
Geology_ to showing "the consistency of geological discoveries with
sacred history". His explanation is that an undefined interval may have
elapsed after the creation of the heaven and the earth "in the
beginning" as recorded in the first verse of Genesis; and he rejects as
opposed to geological evidence "the derivation of existing systems of
organic life, by an eternal succession, from preceding individuals of
the same species, or by gradual transmutation of one species into
another". But speculations of this order were utterly ignored by such
religious leaders as Newman and Irving, whose spiritual fervour, however
apostolical in its influence on the hearts of their disciples, was
confined within the narrowest circle of intellectual interests.

[Pageheading: _POOR LAW._]

The great event of parliamentary history in 1834, and the crowning
achievement of the first reformed parliament, was the enactment of the
"new poor law," as it was long called. No measure of modern times so
well represents the triumph of reason over prejudice; none has been so
carefully based on thorough inquiry and the deliberate acceptance of
sound principles; none has so fully stood the conclusive test of
experience. It is not too much to say that it was essentially a product
of the reform period, and could scarcely have been carried either many
years earlier or many years later. In the dark age which followed the
great war, contempt for political economy, coupled with a weak sentiment
of humanity, would have made it impossible for a far-sighted treatment
of national pauperism and distress to obtain a fair hearing. After the
introduction of household suffrage, and the growth of socialism, any
resolute attempt to diminish the charge upon ratepayers for the
immediate relief but ultimate degradation of the struggling masses would
have met with the most desperate resistance from the new democracy. The
philosophical whigs and radicals, trained in the school of Bentham, and
untainted as yet by a